Little engines! I hear they could! Let’s put them to the test by checking out the tiny trains of the Science Museum of Virginia’s 35th Annual Model Railroad Show. You can learn how to build a bangin’ railroad layout, play train-type games, tour an actual train car, and watch an IMAX movie all about those big lugs. THEN…we’ll meet up in your basement and put together an entire world of colliding engines. I’ll bring the engineer caps!

This year, my friends and I are all about homemade holiday gifts. They’ll save us money, they’ll be more heartfelt, and they’ll save us money (maybe I already mentioned that). It occurred to me that maybe I could buy some things that have been handmade and then give my friends the idea, however subtly, that I made these little knick-knacks just for them. Head over to the month-long holiday edition of the Bizarre Market, where you can get pretty much everything you could ever want or need. And you can get it covered in glitter. It’s an alternative holiday craft fair, y’all.

Poor old Willy Loman. Still a salesman and still dead. Relive this Arthur Miller classic or experience it for the first time. You’ll feel conflicted about the American Dream, and you’ll feel your loyalties shifting throughout the play, so that by the time they’ve taken their curtain call, you’ve shifted loyalties completely! You’ll leave with people other than with whom you came. Don’t believe me? I was adopted by a family of wolves because I was separated from my mother at a performance of Death of a Salesman. Feel pretty bad now, don’t you.

Through Dec. 8

Firehouse Theatre, 1609 W. Broad St.

$15 – $32

4. Go see a movie

Some people like leaves crunching under their feet, other people like blazers, and still more people like it when people bake things to bring into work all the time. I was having trouble engaging with fall this year…that is, until I realized that the movies are fall’s real bright spots! Now in serious contention for Oscars, the studios are pulling out all the stops. You could go get misty while watching Lincoln or be intrigued by Cloud Atlas or piece together the layers of Skyfall. It’s all the same to me, just grab some friends, bring some cash, have a weird drink in a roped-off lobby, and relax a little bit before the show.

Though it’s technically bordering on next weekend, ART 180’s ninth annual Art Karma benefit event and silent auction needed to be one of this week’s Things so that you seize the opportunity to grab an early bird ticket. What am I seizing, and wherefore am I seizing it, you ask? Why, Art Karma is a beloved event by a beloved nonprofit that does all sorts of things with art and kids and the community. So I suggest you get a move on!